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Legal Traditions in Louisiana and the Floridas 1763-1848

Donlan, Sean Patrick; Vernon Palmer

Donlan, Sean Patrick and Vernon Palmer. Legal Traditions in Louisiana and the Floridas 1763-1848. xxxv, 297 pp. 10 illustrations. Clark, New Jersey: Talbot Publishing (an imprint of The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.), 2019. ISBN-13: 9781616195847. ISBN-10: 1616195843. Hardcover. New. $75. * This collection focuses on the period from 1763 through the mid-nineteenth century. In Louisiana and the Floridas, the territorial ambitions of Britain, France, and Spain, as well as the new American Republic, led to a rapidly shifting series of political and cultural changes. The result in the region was the creation of complex hybrids of social mores, customs, and legal ideas and institutions. Of particular significance were the land claims that inevitably followed transfers of sovereignty and legal systems, the social and legal entrenchment of established elites and the institution of slavery, as well as a legacy of extra-legal violence and folk justice. The fluid borders of Louisiana and the Floridas, both East and West, exposed the flexible social identities and political loyalties of those who were settled there. Indeed, later accounts of the period and place have often misunderstood mixed motives, and contemporary rhetoric, of its subjects and citizens. Through a mix of different historiographical methods, a broad understanding of legal and social history, and the lens of plural comparative contexts, this collection tells us much about continuity and change in a critical transition period for the region, as well as for the modern Western nation-state and its increasingly common laws. Sean Patrick Donlan is Associate Dean of the Thompson Rivers University Faculty of Law (Canada). His research interests include Irish history, comparative law, and legal history. Most recently, he edited Comparative Legal History (Hart/Taylor & Francis (UK), 2013-2016) and (with D Heirbaut), The Law's Many Bodies: Studies in Legal Hybridity and Jurisdictional Complexity, c1600-1900 (Duncker & Humblot (Germany), 2015). Vernon Palmer is Thomas Pickles Professor of Law and Director of the Eason Weinmann Center for International and Comparative Law, Tulane University. He is a titular member of the International Academy of Comparative Law and recipient of the Legion d'Honneur.